Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, Supplementary B1, paragraph 2

by Corry Shores
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Edmund Husserl

On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

B: Supplementary Texts

I "On the Introduction of the Essential Distinction between 'Fresh' Memory and 'Full' Recollection and about the Change in Content and Differences in Apprehension in the Consciousness of Time"

No. 1 "How Does the Unity of a Process of Change that Continues for an Extended Period of Time Come to Be Represented?

Intuition and Re-presentation"

Paragraph 2

We know two things about the melody:

1) it is made of different parts, and

2) it has a unified identity.

It very well could be that there is a multiplicity of intuitions corresponding to the melody's different "tonal forms." Nonetheless, for it to have a unified identity, there must also be one common act underlying all of them. The melodies separate developments must "flow away in one (temporally enduring) act." (143d)

Even if particular acts correspond to the individual tones and formations, an act must be there that, by overlapping the particular acts, encompasses the unity of the contents, so far as the unity is a content that is noticed in each moment. (143d emphasis mine)

So the content of this one act might vary and change from moment to moment. Nonetheless, its unity remains preserved. (143-144)

As the melody continues, the time it takes-up expands as it flows into the past. So on the one hand there is a temporal expansion. However, as new additions emerge into the present, the content of our previous intuitions will change or vanish. So as present intuitions fade-out, their actual temporality is taken-away from them. So on the other hand, there is a temporal contraction. We see that the intuition we have of the melody changes from moment-to-moment. And the only actual part of the melody is the small part happening in the now moment. (144a)

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Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917). Vol 4 of Edmund Husserl: Collected Works. Ed. Rudolf Bernet. Trans. John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.